Time, the old enemy, is why recruitment agencies are still so valuable.

Recruiting, like fishing, is time consuming - whoever you are

There’s an awful Eckhart Tolle-esque quote sweeping Facebook and Twitter lately. It says ‘It’s not about time, it’s about choices. How are you spending your choices?’ Spreading this cringe-inducing banality appears to be some kind of competitive sport on social media.  It makes me long for the days of gas lamps and messenger pigeons.

But, there is a point underneath: What you choose to spend your time on is important. 

Time management is a misnomer. You can't manage time. It doesn’t matter how well organized you are, you can't put a 25^th hour in the day, or slow the clock down. What we refer to as time management is simply making good choices about what to do and when to do it.

With each now development in the sphere of staffing over the last 15 years, people have been claiming that the recruitment industry is under threat. The internet was going to kill off Recruitment agencies; then the job boards and now social media. But Recruitment agencies are not going anywhere, and the reason is this: there are better ways for employers to choose to spend their time. Each new product or online service that arrives in the employment sphere does not change this fact.

The major job boards, through every possible marketing investment up to and including Superbowl advertising, have greatly increased their resume resources (and credit to them - they have built great businesses and made a lot of coin.). But in doing so, all they’ve done is to make the lake employers are fishing in larger – they have not made the fish any easier to catch. The universal uptake of social media and the pushes made by Linked-In particularly to raise revenue through recruitment services (136% increase in the last 12 months) is only serving to make the lake even bigger yet.

What matters is still the fishing.

Nobody has the time to sit and fish for hours on end except professional fishermen. Let them do it. They will catch fish to order, and you don’t have to pay a dime until the fish is in your hand. That has to be a better plan than spending what time you can running down to the lake and casting your line in the water.

The Recruitment industry represents a basic example of a sensible division of labor.  Finding, attracting and cementing new hires are tasks that require full time focus. It doesn’t matter how many tools are made available to employers, potential hires still need to be found, courted, convinced and onboarded through a process that is sometimes sensitive, often intricate and always, always time-consuming.

There can surely be no greater individual piece of evidence in support of this theory than the fact that recruiting companies outsource their own recruitment. There is a thriving market for ‘Rec-to-rec’ recruitment (agencies who only place other recruiters). It might sound ridiculous, but it's common sense. The job is better outsourced to people who have slightly more experience of the specific needs of the process and all the time in the world to do it. The flashiest fishing rod will not improve your ability to catch fish - you need skill and time. Many employers have the skill, but few have the time. At the end of the day, you can't eat a fishing rod and you can't hire a resume. 

So I'd advise anyone who's hiring this year to remember: Even Recruiters know that recruitment is a job that would be better outsourced. The reason the recruitment industry has thrived despite all the developments in the global job market is because there are simply more valuable ways to ‘spend your choices' as an employer.




Richard Spragg writes on various subjects including global engineering staffing and global engineering jobs.

A shared vision of the future, no matter how general, should drive hiring decisions

A year ago this month, Forbes identified the only three questions that are really being asked and answered during a job interview. (Top Executive Recruiters Agree There Are Only Three True Job Interview Questions – George Bradt.)

They were:

1.  Can you do the job?

2.  Will you love the job?

3.  Can we tolerate working with you?

The article was among their most popular over the last 12 months and frequently appears on the most read articles list even now.

But there’s a major piece missing from this picture and I was given reason to revisit it this week during a career conversation with an old friend.

My friend has run into some issues working for a large retail employer in the US. He is quite miserable and looking to get out. But the fact is that he fulfils each of the three criteria set out by the Forbes article. John (we’ll call him that) can do the job and do it well; he’s neither over nor under qualified, he is challenged by the work but is never out of his depth. He loves the work and is extremely committed to the company itself. All these things, combined with his easy going personality and good humor have made him extremely popular within the organization with his colleagues and managers. Frankly they don’t tolerate him – they love him.

Yet despite all this he is actively looking to get out and soon. This will, in due course, horrify his employer who will be scrambling to keep him in various closed door meetings, looking at salary sructures and trying to make an attractive counter offer, oblivious to the fact that they are wasting their time. It’s over.

The problem is simply this: John’s vision of his career at the company differed considerably from the employer’s vision. He saw himself progressing to a different role quite quickly. He saw himself taking on management responsibilities and assuming control of a growing portfolio. (I reserve any judgement on whether he was capable or not of doing the things he wanted to do.) Sufficed to say, there was nothing obviously unrealistic or overreaching – the objectives he had seem  relatively modest. All that mattered in the end was that this simply wasn’t the way his employer saw him.

They had hired a steady performer, well liked and hard working who they believed would become more and more valuable to the department. They did not think he was ambitious; they did not see him as a manager and as a result they hired people from outside into jobs that they had no idea he aspired to.

So here’s the rub. Before you hire someone, or before you get yourself hired, you have to know that both employer and employee have a broadly shared vision of the future - beyond the current team, the current role and the new hire’s current skill set.


Ask the three year question. This is a vital part of every interview I've conducted in the last five years. In 1-2 years - everyone will tell you they want to be performing well in the same role. In 5-10 years - everyone wants to be in a senior management role. In 15-20 years they want to be retired on a vineyard. It is the three year time frame that holds the answers. 

Nobody can see the future and nobody can predict it. But too often this means that the hiring process ignores the future entirely. The Forbes article certainly does. So I suggest you add the missing element to your list:

1.  Can you do the job?

2.  Will you love the job?

3.  Can we tolerate working with you?

4.  Do we have a shared vision of your future?

Otherwise, like John, you’ll be a capable, committed, likeable former employee. And all they needed to ask him was where he wanted to be in three years. 










Richard Spragg writes on various subjects including global engineering staffing and global engineering jobs.

5 ways to make the Recruiters you work with more effective

Whether it’s an agency you’re dealing with or your own in-house Recruiters, you’ll get what you need faster if you can deliver these five simple things:

1. Decent Feedback

When it comes to refining a search and delivering you a better candidate, knowing why you’re passing on the ones you’ve already been given is invaluable. A trial and error approach is no good for anyone. In a world where job descriptions are often mass produced from a template and access to the real decision maker can be limited, some simple, direct feedback is vital. Ultimately it’s going to save you time and get you what you need faster.

2. Some Exclusivity

If you’re working with thirty agencies on your vacancies, you’re not going to get the best service from any of them. If they know their work is unlikely to bear fruit simply based on the fact that they have a one in thirty chance of getting their resumes properly reviewed, they’re not going to send their best people. The cream of candidates, those who are not available from job boards and agencies en masse will always go to the customers who take the recruiter most seriously, retain a few close relationships with reputable agencies and don’t fall into the trap of thinking that the more resumes they get, the more people they will hire.

3. Access

The more a Recruiter can understand about your projects and your culture, the faster they can get you the people you need. Don’t be afraid to invite your two or three best recruiters to see what you’re working on, to get a feel for your business and your team. This will help them to understand your real needs and provide you a better service. I always council clients to be suspicious of vendors who want to take them out for expensive dinners, or drop off fancy gifts. They’re only paying for it in the short term. In the long term, they’re going to want something in return that they haven’t earned. It’s the recruiters who want to meet you and your team in your office who are probably the ones worth taking seriously. They’re prepared to let the work do the talking.   Let them come; most of them are house trained and the benefits will come back to you.

4. A Little Respect

Recruiters have it tough. Whether they’re corporate or commercial, you can bet they’ve got more jobs to fill than they reasonably can, more competition than they’ve ever had before and a great deal of pressure coming from the people they’re accountable to. Like agents in any field, there is a long held misperception that they are reckless cowboys who will do anything for a fast buck. For the vast majority, who are working long hours for modest base salaries, this is hugely inaccurate. During my time working with a lot of different Recruiters and recruiting teams, the biggest frustration expressed by strong, professional recruiters has been that their motives are constantly doubted, even by the customers with whom they had developed good relationships. When something bad happens: when someone pulls out at the last minute, or drastically increases their salary demands, remember that it is highly unlikely to be your recruiter who’s yanking your chain. They just lost their lunch.

5. Realism

Recruiters work the vast majority of their hours for free. The no win, no fee payment structure removes client accountability for the time recruiters put in. The trouble with this is that when a company thinks they might need twenty five people, they often get their recruiters attention by forgetting to mention the ‘might’.  I’ve seen so many urgent jobs that turned out to actually be bids. The thing is, I would have been delighted to help on the bid – heck we could have helped make the bid better if we’d known that’s what we were doing. Give your recruiters your best assessment of the real opportunity. If there are ten openings but you think you’ll fill five of them internally, let them know.

All in all, Recruiters live at the behest of their customers, and that’s how it should be. A decent Recruiter should be working on delivering a better service with each opportunity they get. They should want to earn your business every day. If you think you’ve found an agency who is genuinely doing those things, then meet them half way. It’s good for you, it’s good for them and ultimately, you’ll get a better, faster service.




Richard Spragg writes on various subjects including global engineering staffing and global engineering jobs.